Application:Signal Processing (SP)

They must also account for analog interfaces, DSP blocks, multiple memory banks for ping-pong buffers, and FPGA expansion. FPGAs are ideal for meeting the varied demands of these applications, providing a balance between price, power, and performance along with flexibility. BittWare’s data conversion and Digital Signal Processing FPGA platforms for military/aerospace, industrial and medical applications provide the solution.
Why BittWare for Signal Processing:

Arria 10 FPGAs provide up to 1.5 TFLOPS of floating point performance

Embedded hard floating point DSP blocks

Up to 48 GBytes of on-board memory per board (DDR4, QDR-II/II+)

Complete integrated platforms, ready to use out of the box, with PCIe, VPX, or AMC boards, chassis, and software

FPGA Development Kit with proven, hardware-specific IP

Long standing FPGA platform vendor with a history of proven, successful, on-time supply

Case Study

Electronic Warfare Jammer Channelizer

Electronic Warfare Jammers need to analyze wide bandwidths with low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) to detect critical, time sensitive threats. One way to achieve this is to channelize the wide bandwidth to separate signals of interest from noise and interferers through a filter bank and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).
To streamline this effort, Altera developed a highly parameterizable and efficient super- sample rate FFT IP. This allows the designer to select the number of phases and size of the FFT for DSP Builder Advanced Blockset to output an efficient implementation for GHz sample rate ADCs. To demonstrate this capability, Altera teamed with Bittware to channelize a 2.5GHz ADC into various channels, which is then displayed in Matlab via Altera’s system-in-the-loop feature.
The channelizer platfrom includes a COTS 6U VPX FPGA board, which provides two independent Statix V FPGAs, each with identical memory, communications, host interfaces, and VITA 57/FMC sites for modular I/O; this board can therefore support two separate instances of the channelizer project. The VITA 57/FMC sites are populated with an FMC with a 10-bit A/D converter that runs at 5 Gsamples/sec. The board assembly was then populated in a 6U VPX chassis, with access to debug and communications via backplane, rear-breakout, and/or a separate breakout board. BittWare provided the A/D converter interface block that was integrated into the Qsys project; their standard software and support toolkit, BittWorks II Toolkit, provides the means to load, reset, and debug the FPGA and monitors the board voltages, currents, and temperatures. The board’s ARM processor, which runs Linux, is an on-board host/controller that can be used to implement command, control, and backend processing.

System level diagram of the channelizer

This reference platform provides a COTS solution for getting a wideband signal digitized and delivered to a well-supported FPGA which, when loaded with the example project, implements a complete wideband channelizer. Each FPGA parametrically ”channelizes” 2.5 GHz of wideband input out of the box, resulting in each COTS board handling 5 GHz, with the bulk of the FPGA and ARM resources still available to the user. An ultra-wideband 20-GHz input can be easily accommodated by placing four of these S56X platforms in a 6U VPX chassis, providing a solution that is flexible, expandable, and scalable, all in a modest size, weight, and power envelope.
For more details on the channelizer project with Altera, check out the following:

Wideband Communication System

Signal processing applications for communication, particularly in the military market space, have to capture and process a massive amount of data – often under difficult field conditions – and then deliver that data quickly and reliably. A customer who was developing a wideband communication system came to BittWare looking for a ready-to-deploy MicroTCA platform. The company used BittWare’s MRDP, an integrated MicroTCA platform that includes AdvancedMC cards and I/O, along with complete software. Their complete system included two dual Stratix IV FPGA boards along with VITA-57 mezzanine cards to provide A/D and D/A. Working with an integrated system allowed the customer to get their product to market quickly and avoid costly delays.